


Forged by Fire

by writeitininkorinblood



Category: Cursed (TV 2020)
Genre: Hate Crime, M/M, against fictional gays I made up but still
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25857754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeitininkorinblood/pseuds/writeitininkorinblood
Summary: Fey ancestry wasn't the only part of Lancelot that the Red Paladins taught him to hate
Relationships: Gawain | The Green Knight/The Weeping Monk | Lancelot (Cursed)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 131





	Forged by Fire

**Author's Note:**

> CAUTION: This fic features the persecution of a queer couple (not Lancelot/Gawain). People die, it ain't good. I made those particular people up and they don't even have names but just so you're aware.
> 
> Unrelated to my longer Gawain/Lancelot fic.

It was difficult, sometimes, for Lancelot to sift through what Father Carden and the Red Paladins had taught him and sort it into right and wrong. While he felt their lies about the Fey burn within him and he knew, increasingly so, that their crusade to rid the country of all non-humans was barbaric, these were still people who had shaped everything he knew. They’d taught him to forage for edible berries and mushrooms, to string a bow, to shave. They had raised him.

Lancelot still remembered the day they’d taught him it was a sin to yearn for other men. He’d been barely a teenager, entirely innocent in his thoughts and just beginning to develop the buds of a childlike crush on one of the Red Paladins who was usually helping dish out the food at mealtimes. He’d had dark eyes that always winked at Lancelot as he handed him an extra bread roll or plated him a little too much stew. The feelings hadn’t been reciprocal, he’d just been indulging the child, but Lancelot had felt giddy every time. He hadn’t known there was anything wrong with it, not until Father Carden pulled him out of his tent one day to join a crowd in the middle of camp.

“This is something you should see,” he’d murmured.

Two men were lashed to an unlit pyre, still very much alive. It wasn’t anything Lancelot hadn’t seen before – Father Carden had been taking him to observe raids of Fey villages for years. But these weren’t Fey. They still wore their Paladin robes.

Lancelot picked up the context he needed from the whispered passed from man to man as he was led through the crowd. They’d been caught together down by the river, being ‘indecent’, ‘vile’, ‘sinful’. And it had been decided that they had to burn.

Father Carden had stood in front of the crowd and raised his hand to ask for silence.

“These men,” he’d said, raising his usually gentle voice until it boomed like it came from the heavens, “have brought evil into our camp. When we ask for volunteers, we expect the call to be answered by the pure of soul and the brave of heart. If people we have trusted among us reveal themselves to be corruptible by the devil, to revel in their sin and turn themselves so fully from an almighty god, then we have no choice but to cleanse their souls in the fires of the righteous.”

A cheer had gone through the crowd and Lancelot had felt sick. He knew he was damned for being Fey-born and he was trying his best to atone, but he’d never imagined he was equally as cursed for the way his stomach flipped at a wink from a pretty man. It had never even occurred to him.

A flambeau was brought up but just as the Paladin wielding it had stepped forward to light the logs at the bottom of the bound men’s feet, Father Carden had stopped him.

“Let the boy do it,” he’d said, like it was a reward. “He’s been doing so well.”

And then they’d handed Lancelot the burning torch.

One of the men had stood there in silence, head held high, not even blinking as he stared out over the top of the crowd of gathered Red Paladins. The other couldn’t find the same composure and was openly crying, tears tracking down his cheeks and neck until they were absorbed by his red robes. He had begged and screamed but never once renounced the man by his side.

Lancelot hadn’t wanted to. That wasn’t the first time he’d had to kill, but it was different from all the others. The Fey who had been target practise for his arrows through the trees not even spoken been off as living beings as Father Carden clapped him on the shoulder and congratulated him for a perfect shot; they hadn’t been people he’d lived alongside. They hadn’t been people. The torch was heavy in his hand and he wanted to drop it, but Father Carden’s hand was firm on his back, pushing him forward.

He’d never been able to tell, not even looking back after more than a decade had passed, if it had been simply another way to familiarise him with cruelty, or if Father Carden had been beginning to suspect Lancelot of having thoughts not unlike those of the men they’d caught. Either way, refusing to do as he was told would only have brought him under scrutiny. And he really was trying to prove himself worthy of salvation so, with shaking hands, he’d lit the fire.

They’d burned hand in hand. Lancelot would never forget it. Even after so many fires, so many years later, that specific memory of the smell of human flesh as it blistered, the lick of heat from the flames so close to his face, it remained.

Lancelot pushed any thoughts he’d been having out of his head that day. Pretty men with nice smiles who winked at him had gone in the box with his remaining memories of his mother, any thoughts about being Fey-born, and he’d closed the lid tight and melted down the key. He couldn’t be saved, couldn’t help save others, if he dwelled on his damnation.

It wasn’t until he’d ridden out of that camp with Squirrel, beaten and bloodied, and eventually found himself in a Fey camp of all places, that he realised the Paladins’ harsh punishment that day had maybe been just as misguided as their war on the Fey.

There were two Faun men sat across the fire, holding hands and occasionally trading kisses, and Lancelot couldn’t stop staring. No one was glaring at them, no one was hauling them apart and binding their hands. It was, as far as he could tell, nothing out of the ordinary. Only that kind of casual affection between two men was nothing he’d ever seen and something in his heart ached for it. He felt chills run down his arms, not in fright but in sheer disbelief.  
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you staring was wrong,” Pym said, poking him in the side from where she sat beside him.

“What?” he asked, barely even hearing her and far from registering her words.

“Felix and Tegan. Stop staring.”

When she poked him again he realised with a start exactly what it was he was doing, and so openly, and he forced his gaze away from the couple.

“I wasn’t staring,” he muttered.

Pym just laughed.  
“Sure you weren’t,” she snorted. “I guess the Red Paladins aren’t too accepting of all that, huh? Not that all Fey are either. Some of the clans are a little more… old-fashioned. A lot of the kids used to stare at them just like you were, but the two of them were really patient about it. Explained that it wasn’t bad, wasn’t all that different.”  
“They’re lucky they found each other,” Lancelot said, despite himself. He wondered how either of them had ever had the courage to reach out not knowing if the person they were reaching for would take their hand or tie it to a pyre.

“You think they’re the only ones?” Pym smiled. “Not by a long shot. There’s- well, it’s probably rude to name them all. But there are several couples that just tend to be a little more private, and at least half a dozen people single but that way inclined, that I know about. If you’re looking to get set up.”

Lancelot felt his chest tighten in fear. She was teasing, that he knew, but he couldn’t stop the automatic reaction that he had been caught and was going to be punished. He could still feel that torch in his shaking hand, still hear the screams of the innocent men he’d burned.

“I’m not like that,” he forced, clenching his jaw.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” Pym held up her hands. “Just seemed like you looked a little jealous when you were staring.”

He was a little jealous. He was jealous no one had ever held his hand like that, jealous these men had the courage to be so blatant. As much as he had honed the skill of keeping his emotions suppressed, he had never been able to entirely ignore the lingering attraction to men he encountered. While the chances of him ever forming a relationship with another Ash Folk were slim considering their long absence from the lands he found himself in, Fey couples from different clans were not considered taboo. They were certainly rare, but rather because clans did not often cross paths for extended periods of time. Now things were different and there was safety and survival in numbers, Lancelot had not been blind to the cross-clan courting around camp. Regardless, he’d made too many mistakes and too many enemies for someone whose home he had destroyed to ever be able to love him. His redemption in the eyes of the Fey was as unlikely as his redemption in the eyes of the Red Paladin’s god had been. He was just going to have to accept that he wasn’t made to be loved.

Across the fire, Gawain watched as Lancelot spoke somewhat brusquely with Pym, unable to look away from the Weeping Monk’s eyes. They held so much, from the reflection of the fire that danced across them to the aching depths of a broken past. He was certain half the camp would consider it heresy that he wanted to look closer, but he felt a pull in his chest that wouldn’t let him leave the idea alone and he knew it was only a matter of time before he followed that pull to see exactly where it went.


End file.
